Reading List: Rest

Readinglist Rest

A 21st-century contradiction sits at the heart of this book: Overworking yourself or your employees is the wrong way to reach your goals. “Productivity books offer life hacks, advice about how to get more done, or stories about what CEOs or famous writers do,” Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes. “But they say almost nothing about the role of rest in the lives or careers of creative and productive people.”

Related: Why Working More Is Making You Less Productive

Rest is an equal partner to work, argues Pang, visiting scholar at Stanford University and senior consultant at a Silicon Valley think tank. The most creative people of history—from Charles Darwin to Stephen King—knew how to do it. They harness daydreaming to free the unconscious mind to find new ideas. They plan rest into every day. They know that the right kind of rest prolongs creative life. This is a book of deep wisdom and human insight.

Rest
By Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
December; Basic Books; $28

 

This article originally appeared in the December 2016 issue of SUCCESS magazine.

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Chauncey Mabe is a freelance writer, book critic, and blogger in Miami, Fla. For 23 years he served as Book Editor and Senior Entertainment Writer at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. He was Book Blogger for the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, the parent organization of Miami Book Fair International, from 2009 to 2012. He also blogs for the Betsy Hotel South Beach hotel, which sponsors literary events year round. His reviews and feature stories have appeared in publications such as the Toronto Globe & Mail, the Serving House Journal, Inspicio, the Palm Beach Arts Paper, the Baltimore Sun, the Juneau Empire, and the Chicago Tribune.

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